Once you get into this great stream of history, you can’t get out.

Perhaps, after all, America never has been discovered. I myself would say that it had merely been detected.

I wear a hat on stage so that people won’t be blinded by the reflection from my head. Also, if I don’t wear a hat, there’s no way that the hat can be at that level by itself on the stage.

A leader who confines his role to his people’s experience dooms himself to stagnation; a leader who outstrips his people’s experience runs the risk of not being understood.

Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to that arrogant oligarchy who merely happen to be walking around.

They’ve got this crazy actor who’s 82 years old up there in a suit. I was a mayor, and they’re probably thinking I know how to give a speech, but even when I was mayor I never gave speeches. I gave talks.

Colonies do not cease to be colonies because they are independent.

It is much easier to be critical than to be correct.

I long for the time when all human history is taught as one history, because it really is.

I second-guess and overthink and rethink every single thing that I do.

I’ve been here before and will come again, but I’m not going this trip through.

Life would be tolerable but for its amusements.

Old age is like a plane flying through a storm. Once you’re aboard, there’s nothing you can do.

Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future.

Instead of comparing our lot with that of those who are more fortunate than we are, we should compare it with the lot of the great majority of our fellow men. It then appears that we are among the privileged.

If only the people who worry about their liabilities would think about the riches they do possess, they would stop worrying.

As a musician and a songwriter, it is an act of the ego to believe that other people might be interested in your point of view. But it is usually an empathetic nature that gets you going in the first place.

The principle that human nature, in its psychological aspects, is nothing more than a product of history and given social relations removes all barriers to coercion and manipulation by the powerful.

Choosing to be positive and having a grateful attitude is going to determine how you’re going to live your life.

You use a glass mirror to see your face; you use works of art to see your soul.

One and the same thing can at the same time be good, bad, and indifferent, e.g., music is good to the melancholy, bad to those who mourn, and neither good nor bad to the deaf.

Without words, without writing and without books there would be no history, there could be no concept of humanity.

Every time there has been an effort by the Haitian people to overcome the misery and poverty that comes from 200 years of bitter attacks, really bitter, the U.S. steps in and blocks it.

Become aware of your own insufficiency.

All empires come to an end, and the American one is no exception.

I don’t think it’s possible to have a sense of tragedy without having a sense of humor.

Everything is clearer when you’re in love.

A lost battle is a battle one thinks one has lost.

The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it.

We find ourselves under the government of a system of political institutions, conducing more essentially to the ends of civil and religious liberty, than any of which the history of former times tells us.

I used to tell my husband that, if he could make me ‚understand‘ something, it would be clear to all the other people in the country.

One likes people much better when they’re battered down by a prodigious siege of misfortune than when they triumph.

It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors.

I’ve been around longer than most of my fans have been alive.

The former colonies, in Latin America in particular, have a better chance than ever before to overcome centuries of subjugation, violence and foreign intervention, which they have so far survived as dependencies with islands of luxury in a sea of misery.

Sometimes there are no good guys. There are no bad guys. It seems like everybody is in the middle.

There is nothing wrong with men possessing riches. The wrong comes when riches possess men.

Meeting Franklin Roosevelt was like opening your first bottle of champagne; knowing him was like drinking it.

The child inside of you knows how to take things as they come, how to deal most effectively and happily with everything and everyone it encounters on this planet. If you can recapture that childlike essence of your being, you can stay ‚forever young at heart.‘

Why should anybody be interested in some old man who was a failure?

There’s no present. There’s only the immediate future and the recent past.

A friend who is far away is sometimes much nearer than one who is at hand. Is not the mountain far more awe-inspiring and more clearly visible to one passing through the valley than to those who inhabit the mountain?

The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.

Where the Mind is biggest, the Heart, the Senses, Magnanimity, Charity, Tolerance, Kindliness, and the rest of them scarcely have room to breathe.

Wealth is not his that has it, but his that enjoys it.

Man never thinks himself happy, but when he enjoys those things which others want or desire.

I’ve been trying to… Having been an English literary graduate, I’ve been trying to avoid the idea of doing art ever since. I think the idea of art kills creativity.

I always like to look on the optimistic side of life, but I am realistic enough to know that life is a complex matter.

If we could first know where we are, and whither we are tending, we could then better judge what to do, and how to do it.

I’m no longer just a candidate. I’m the President. I know what it means to send young Americans into battle, for I have held in my arms the mothers and fathers of those who didn’t return. I’ve shared the pain of families who’ve lost their homes, and the frustration of workers who’ve lost their jobs.

We have one planet in our solar system that’s habitable, and that’s the Earth, and space travel can transform things back here for the better. First of all, by just having people go to space and look back on this fragile planet we live on. People have come back transformed and have done fantastic things.

I actually feel like women in my position, when we have all at our disposal to help us, shouldn’t complain when we consider all of the people who are really struggling and don’t have the means or support. Many people are single, raising children. That’s hard.

There are only two kinds of men: the righteous who think they are sinners and the sinners who think they are righteous.

Mortality is very different when you’re 20 to when you’re 50.

There is no such thing as accident; it is fate misnamed.

Christmas is a tonic for our souls. It moves us to think of others rather than of ourselves. It directs our thoughts to giving.

Every wall is a door.

There are definitely people who disagree with certain creative decisions you make. Pleasing everyone is pretty hard.

It is not sufficient to see and to know the beauty of a work. We must feel and be affected by it.

History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce.

The questions which one asks oneself begin, at least, to illuminate the world, and become one’s key to the experience of others.